Windbaggers Stoop to New Low. Death Threats to Wind Worker.

August 5, 2012

Windbagger groups will say they don’t condone this, but when you traffic in the kind of far right wing conspiracy craziness that they do, the intent is clearly to draw out the nutbag element. It’s a tactic that far right wing hate groups have deployed consistently right back to the civil rights era – intimidation with deniability.
This incident shows that they are successfully reaching their intended audience.

West Grey Police are investigating alleged threats against a worker, who says he had a shotgun pulled on him while working on a wind turbine site northeast of London, Ont. Police are also investigating threatening phone calls the man says he received.

Jeff Damen was doing preliminary work at the site of a proposed wind farm in the community of West Grey, near London last week when he says a red pickup truck pulled alongside his vehicle and the driver asked what he was doing.

After Damen explained the work he was doing, the driver pulled out a gun, Damen said.

“He reached over his back seat, and pulled out a shotgun, pointed it at me and stated, ‘Why don’t you leave us all alone? If I catch you back here again, I’m going to kill you,'” Damen said. Damen was unable to get a licence plate number. It was covered by a folded down tailgate.

West Grey Police Const. Janet Shumaker said Damen was alone at the time of the alleged incident but the police are taking the matter seriously. “This is the first time something like this has ever happened,” Shumaker said.

Damen said he then received some cryptic phone calls Monday. “They stated they know where I live and know what I do,” he said. “That’s pretty much how they left it and hung up.”

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Damen said it’s not the first time he’s been confronted in his field of work. “I have encountered verbal attacks, personally to me, regarding wind, but it has never escalated to this point,” he said. “This has gone to a new level of my safety, for sure.”

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10 Responses to “Windbaggers Stoop to New Low. Death Threats to Wind Worker.”

It’s disconcerting to be at gunpoint – as has happened to me twice – but I’m more concerned by the phone calls.
That implies planning and organisation which is much more worrisome than one pissed-off gun nut.

1983 – early morning, traveling to work, waiting for public transit outside a chain pharmacy, leaning on the mailbox.
Wells Fargo truck pulls up, presumably to collect the safe contents before store opening.
Guard on passenger side gets out; BIG fella, at least 9 in taller, no less than 275 lbs, wearing a cap and dark shades.
He’s holding what looks to be a sawed-off with pistol grip, sees me at the door and without a word, points his weapon at me and clicks the safety OFF.

Outwardly, I always appear calm but inside I’m shaking half in fear, half in rage ( I used to be VERY quick-tempered ).

While trying to stare him down, I say “Hey, fatso, I hope you didn’t skip breakfast; it’s unhealthy to commit murder on an empty stomach”

He doesn’t react at all but the driver tells him to take it easy and put up his gun. I actually don’t recall what he did next as the bus pulled up, cheating the world of another shooting statistic.

1992 – local bar, where I had lots of friends and was on good terms with owner and managers.
Some jackass confronted me when I was half-smashed over some trivial BS that I can’t fully recall the details.
I don’t recall seeing a weapon although I remember him reaching into his coat saying I’d f@#$ked with the wrong person and he was going to blow me away.
I replied that if my blood stained the pool table, there was no way he was making it out the door alive.
Truth was, I wasn’t bluffing. If he was armed and had serious intent, I was dead.
But while I wasn’t and had never really been gang-affiliated, I was a friend-of -a-friend to 2 different groups who had members who were known killers and this was one of their favorite clubs.

The bar we were in was essentially neutral turf, which was one reason why I went there and this schmuck and his 3 friends weren’t locals or FOAFs of any of the power players.
This place, sadly long gone, was packed with pretty, friendly girls all the time and there was almost always an undercover cop on the busy nights which the mgmt and most staff and patrons were actually okay with.

The cops weren’t hardasses about weed but they didn’t want to see cokeheads doing lines in the toilet.

I’ll buy you a few myself.
Here’s one more that happened to a coworker from long ago.

Not sure of the date but sometime in the late ’80s – early ’90s.

My friend, let’s call him Chuck, is working at a 24-hr gas station inside a small bulletproof outdoor booth with a sturdy door.

Punk on motorbike pulls up to the outside, draws a shotgun and demands the cash.
Chuck taps the glass and tells him to get lost.

Punk smiles, points shotgun slightly downward and demands again.

Chuck reconsiders and forks over all the cash.

Why?

Because the punk was aiming into the area where you put the cash or take your change – essentially a stainless steel bowl where half of it is inside the booth.
If the punk had a pistol, Chuck would have told him to take a flying leap but if only a handful of shotgun pellets ricocheted off the bowl and into the booth, he figured he’d be cut to ribbons.

Thanks! Rest of my story. I drew an imaginary bulls eye around my heart, raised my hands, and smiled sweetly. She pulled the trigger. The chamber was empty. Maybe that was intentional, maybe not. (She’d been wide awake for days.) However, it took about a nano-second to decide to run, suffering only a few bruises and cuts from having taken various “short cuts” with an athleticism far exceeding any natural ability. (Adrenalin does wonders.)

I was in Dallas on computer business, and decided to meet a college friend that evening “for a drink”. The only memory of the nightclub was big, glitzy and loud.

Not sure how the CBC could have messed up one of the facts but the West Grey Police are stationed in the city of Durham which is more “south of Owen Sound” on highway 6 rather than north-east of London. Now although south-west Ontario is fairly modern, there are small pockets of confused people living in that area doing the “citizen militia thing” and even some rumors of a small amount of KKK activity. Oh well, I guess you can’t get away from red-necks.

A lot of the audience for climate crocks.com is American, so, yeah, lots of gunpoint stories. One for me was being in the restaurant half of a bar/restaurant combo with a huge pistol trained on me and the girl next to me for over an hour. The drunk with the pistol was a friend of the bouncer in the bar. We were discouraged from making trouble by involving the cops.